Wow! I'm glad I do not own any Dell stock. Because if I did,
I'd be selling it immediately after reading these posts of the
last two days.
The only Dell systems that I have worked with are older desktop
units that are 133 - 266 MHz. They tended to be okay. The
power supplies are proprietary and I never planned on using
their customer service, nor any one else's for that matter.
I hate having to teach them their job and wasting my time in
the process!
Eric
Chris Kennedy wrote:
> I've had a few occasions to deal with Dell over the past
> year or so. With the exception of _one_ experience, all of them
> have been bad.
>
> The first was with a new laptop. Display failed on the second
> day; the on site "technical support" guy turned out to be the
> guy who ran the local hole-in-the-wall computer shop. He
> arrived, I handed him the machine and he said "I've never seen
> one of these before". After tightening all of the screws on the
> case (he was unable to figure out how to get into it) he handed
> it back to me and said "send it back to Dell". Three weeks and
> innumerable calls later, I finally told them I was going to
> ask my credit card issuer for a chargeback -- and the next day
> a new machine appeared. The hard drive on _that_ failed after
> 72 hours; it took another two weeks to get a replacement. It's
> been stable since, but by the time it was all over it took more
> than two months to get it to that state.
>
> The second was with a batch of 1U rack mount servers for a
> Wall Street client. The front of each machine was divided
> into four bays, the first three having hot swap drives, the
> fourth having indicators and switches. One of these arrived
> with the switch panel shoved so far back into the chassis that
> it actually popped over the retaining ears that were supposed
> to make such a thing impossible (the shipping boxes were undamaged
> and the machines packed like nitro, so this was a manufacturing
> defect, not a shipping issue). The on-site service tech
> arrives (a different tech -- these machines were installed
> in an urban setting) and says "I've never seen one of these
> before". Apparently that phrase is standard for all Dell
> field service techs. She proceeds to sit cross-legged on
> the machine room floor with the machine in her lap while
> she talks on the phone to Dell for two hours. Eventually
> she pries the panel out -- and breaks its retaining latch
> in the process. Turns out that's not a FRU, so we have to
> exchange the entire machine.
>
> Once we get the machine sorted out, we go to rack mount them.
> Dell, of course, sells rack mount kits, but they only work
> with Dell racks. Dell sends "adapter" kits, but they only
> work with two-post racks -- and we're using four post,
> fully enclosed bays. The customer, who was looking at
> buying a few thousand Dell machines, eventually drags
> some senior Dell VP into their offices, and after I recount
> our experiences with their machines in a conference call
> (resulting, according to the customer, in the guy gagging
> on his pizza) he manages to get the right kits beamed down
> the following day.
>
> I dunno. I no longer buy Dell, and more and more of our
> customers are giving up on Dell as well. The build
> quality is highly uneven and their tech support is biased
> towards helping people plug their machines in. It's
> incredibly frustrating to have people ask if you've
> recently installed any new programs when your hard drive
> is throwing nonrecoverable errors and starting to screech.
>
> --
> Chris Kennedy
> chris_at_mainecoon.com
> http://www.mainecoon.com
> PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
Received on Thu Jan 10 2002 - 15:31:50 GMT